Advertising news today: BuzzFeed book club, Hulu pitch to advertisers

BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief
Ben Smith
Gus
Ruelas/Reuters

BuzzFeed News is starting a new chapter in its bid to diversify
its revenue streams — literally.

The digital publisher is launching a book club in November,
offering its readers a dedicated space for reading and
discovering new books together, while it tries to figure out a
new way of generating revenue in line with its editorial
perspective.

The “BuzzFeed Book Club” entails access to an exclusive
newsletter as well as a closed Facebook group, essentially
serving as a virtual book club, where members can discuss the
book of the month as well as get access to events with authors.
Members will also receive exclusive discounts both on the book of
the month and other top-selling titles. There is no membership
fee to become a member — at least for now.

Click here to read more about BuzzFeed’s new
affiliate program.

In other news:

‘We can literally do anything’: Inside Hulu’s pitch to
advertisers on how it can outperform rivals. Hulu
places a lot of importance on its ad-supported user base, as well
as on the fact that advertisers can get far more creative on the
platform than just 15 or 30-second long ads.

A new survey says cable will win the battle for broadband
customers — and it’s bad news for telecom giants.
Telecom companies will likely lose the long-term battle for
broadband, according to research from Cowen Equity Research.

The cofounder of Instagram on why he left Facebook: ‘No
one ever leaves a job because everything’s awesome.’
There have been reports of tensions between Facebook CEO and
Kevin Systrom (and fellow cofounder Mike Krieger) prior to his
departure.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says employee protests against
the company’s work with US military had little impact on
management: ‘We don’t run the company by
referendum.’ At a tech gathering in San Francisco on
Monday, Pichai remarked on an internal protest that rattled the
company earlier this year.

Facebook will now show who exactly is paying to swing
people’s votes through online political advertising.
Similar to changes rolled out in the US, Facebook will label ads
as they appear in its News Feed and archive all political ads in
a searchable library in the UK.

‘Our industry has lost a pioneer’: Tech titans are
devastated by the death of Microsoft cofounder Paul
Allen. Allen died from complications relating to
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer he was first diagnosed with in
2009.